Synthesis Of Experiences Research Articles

Cross-cultural business development strategies: A Review of USA and African

This Review provides a succinct overview of a comprehensive review examining cross-cultural business development strategies, drawing insights from both the United States (USA) and diverse African contexts. The analysis delves into the intricacies of cultural nuances, economic disparities, and innovative approaches employed by businesses in these distinct regions. In the dynamic landscape of global business, understanding and navigating cross-cultural nuances are imperative for sustainable development. This review juxtaposes the business development strategies of the USA, a beacon of economic prowess and cultural diversity, with the diverse and rapidly evolving markets across Africa. The exploration encompasses a spectrum of factors, including cultural foundations, market dynamics, and innovative approaches, shedding light on the multifaceted nature of cross-cultural business endeavors. The examination begins by unraveling the cultural foundations that underpin business practices in the USA and various African countries. Silicon Valley and Wall Street are emblematic of the USA's entrepreneurial and financial networks, each with its unique cultural influences. Contrastingly, Africa's business landscape is shaped by the rich tapestry of its nations, necessitating a nuanced understanding of cultural nuances and diverse business environments. The review further scrutinizes successful business development strategies deployed in both regions. In the USA, the focus is on innovation hubs, collaborative spaces, and professional associations, illustrating how cultural foundations contribute to the success of networking and industry-specific strategies. In Africa, the analysis extends to diverse strategies employed to navigate cultural diversities and seize opportunities in burgeoning markets. Key economic disparities and challenges faced by businesses in Africa are explored, emphasizing the importance of adaptive strategies for sustained growth. The intricate balance between leveraging cultural strengths and overcoming challenges is central to the comparative analysis, providing valuable insights for businesses, policymakers, and researchers. As businesses increasingly operate in a globalized context, this review underscores the critical importance of cross-cultural competence and tailored strategies for successful business development. The synthesis of experiences from the USA and Africa offers a rich tapestry of lessons, fostering a deeper understanding of the dynamic interplay between culture, economics, and innovation in the realm of cross-cultural business development.

Water-energy nexus: A review of policy and practice in Africa and the USA

This comprehensive review explores the intricate relationship between water and energy in the contexts of Africa and the United States, shedding light on the evolving policies and practices that shape the Water-Energy Nexus (WEN). As the demand for both water and energy intensifies globally, understanding the interdependencies and synergies between these critical resources becomes imperative for sustainable development. In Africa, the WEN presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities. The region grapples with water scarcity, unreliable energy access, and the impacts of climate change. This review assesses the diverse policy frameworks implemented across African nations to address the WEN, examining their effectiveness and identifying gaps for improvement. Furthermore, it highlights innovative practices and successful interventions that have emerged within the African context, contributing valuable insights for sustainable water and energy management. Contrastingly, the United States, with its matured infrastructure and advanced technologies, navigates the complexities of the WEN with a different set of dynamics. The review delves into the multifaceted policy landscape in the U.S., analyzing federal, state, and local initiatives aimed at optimizing the interplay between water and energy resources. Lessons learned from the American experience offer valuable benchmarks for other regions striving to enhance resource efficiency, resilience, and environmental sustainability. Key themes addressed in this review include integrated planning, technological innovations, regulatory frameworks, and community engagement. The synthesis of experiences from Africa and the USA provides a nuanced understanding of the global challenges associated with the WEN and offers a foundation for future research and policy development. Ultimately, this review underscores the importance of holistic approaches that transcend geographical boundaries, encouraging collaborative efforts to address the pressing issues at the intersection of water and energy.

Methods, Standards and Components for Wireless Communications and Power Transfer Aimed at Intra-Vehicular Applications of Launchers

In the world of space systems and launchers in particular, there is always a strong demand for the reduction of the weight of all components/subsystems that are not related to the payload and simplification of the integration phase. A possible solution to both these problems is the replacement of cables and connectors with wireless systems for communication and power supply. With this aim, a survey was carried out through an analysis of the technical/scientific literature available on wireless communication standards and electric power transfer methods. To evaluate wireless systems’ effective applicability, the existence of applicable standards and commercial components that could facilitate their implementation was also verified. To provide information on specific applications, a synthesis of experiences in the aeronautical and space fields of wireless system demonstrators was reported. Consequently, it is clear that there is interest in the subject, but some applications are still limited to the demonstration of systems or, at most, to non-critical functions. Since wireless power transfer methods need less energy from the sensor nodes, a brief investigation into the architectures and components necessary to implement low-power sensor nodes is also included in this study.

ỨNG DỤNG CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN TRONG ĐÁNH GIÁ ĐỊNH HƯỚNG PHÁT TRIỂN NĂNG LỰC TOÁN HỌC

The authors have investigated some trends in applying Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to the assessment process in teaching mathematics toward competency development. We also analyzed the transition from assessing knowledge and skills to assessing mathematical competence as a guideline for assessment in teaching. The above theoretical analysis in combination with a synthesis of experiences allows for a proposition of three feasible measures in assessment practice with the use of ICT such as optimization of multiple-choice tests, enhancement of peer assessment and self-assessment, and innovative learning tasks with multimedia facilities.

Rapid, centralised decision-making in a higher education emergency

PurposeThis study aims to explain the primacy that rapid, centralised decision-making gained in higher education institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on Australian universities.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on discussions regarding policy problems of an international, purpose-convened on-line policy network involving over 100 registrations from multiple countries. It analyses emerging institutional policy governance texts and documents shared between network participants, applies policy science literature regarding traditional institutional policy-making routines and rapid decision-making, and references media reportage from 2020. The paper traces how higher education institutions rapidly adjusted to pandemic conditions and largely on-line operations.FindingsThe study finds that higher education institutions responded to the COVID-19 crisis by operationalising emergency management plans and introducing rapid, centralised decision-making to transition to remote modes of operation, learning and research under state-imposed emergency conditions. It highlights the need to ensure robust governance models recognising the ascendance of emergency decision-making and small-p policies in such circumstances, notwithstanding longstanding traditions of extended collegial policy-making routines for big-P (institutional) Policy. The pandemic highlighted practice and policy problems subject to rapid reform and forced institutions to clarify the relationship between emergency planning and decision-making, quality and institutional policy.Practical implicationsIn covering a range of institutional responses, the study advances the possibility of institutions planning better for unexpected, punctuated policy shifts during an emergency through the incorporation of rapid decision-making in traditionally collegial environments. At the same time, the paper cautions against the normalisation of such processes. The study also highlights key practices and policies that require urgent reconsideration in an emergency. The study is designed as a self-contained and freestanding narrative to inform responses to future emergencies by roundly addressing the particularities of the 2020 phase of the COVID-19 pandemic as it affected higher education.Originality/valueThere is only limited research on policy-making in higher education institutions. This research offers an original contribution on institutional policy-making during a prolonged emergency that deeply changed higher education institution’s governance, operations and outlook. Particularly significant is the synthesis of experiences from a wide range of sector personnel, documenting punctuated policy shifts in policy governance (meta-policy), institutional policy-making routines and quality assurance actions under great pressure. This paper is substantially developed from a paper given at the Association for Tertiary Education Management Institutional Policy Seminar, 26th October 2020.

Implementing integrated care: A synthesis of experiences in three European countries

Many countries are experimenting with new models to better integrate care; yet, innovative care models are often implemented as time-limited, localised projects with limited impact on service delivery more broadly. This paper seeks to understand the processes behind successful projects that achieved some form of ‘routinisation’ and informed system-wide integrated care strategies. It draws on detailed case studies of three integrated care experiments: the ‘Integrated effort for people living with chronic diseases’ project in Denmark; the Gesundes Kinzigtal network in Germany; and Zio, a care group in the Maastricht region in the Netherlands. It explores how they were developed, implemented and sustained, and how they impacted the wider system context. All three models implicitly or explicitly adopted processes shown to be conducive to the dissemination of innovations, including dedicated time and resources, support and advocacy, leadership and management, stakeholder involvement, communication and networks, adaptation to local context and feedback. Each showed robust evidence of improvements on a number of service and patient outcomes and these findings were central to their wider impacts, shaping country-wide integrated care polices. However, the wider dissemination of projects occurred in an incremental and somewhat haphazard way. To further redesign health and social care a more formal strategy, alongside resources, may thus be needed to provide funders and providers with genuine incentives to invest in new business models of care. There remains a crucial need for better understanding of specific local conditions that influence implementation and sustainability to enable translation to other contexts and settings.

Competence Challenges of Demand-Led Agricultural Research and Extension in Uganda

Governments and development agencies in Sub-Saharan Africa are experimenting alternative approaches within the innovation systems paradigm to enhance relevance of agricultural research and extension to the poverty eradication agenda. Uganda, for example, has recently shifted from the supply driven to demand-led agricultural research and extension. This paper discusses the competence challenges associated with this shift based on experiences from a capacity building initiative for a demand-led agricultural research system and a synthesis of experiences in a demand-led extension. Consequently, key competences for the supply and demand sides are suggested. For a demand-led system to work, the supply side will have to be able to facilitate action learning and experimentation; broker information and knowledge exchange; develop and support empowerment of local organisations; think systemically; develop teams and work in teams; develop and manage partnerships and enhance enterprise development. The demand side too will have to be able to self-organise; lobby, advocate and negotiate; have visionary and accountable leadership; learn and experiment; and have entrepreneurial abilities. While in the short-term service providers have to be assisted to acquire these competences, the meta-challenge lies in a long-term strategy to integrate them in the training of professionals working in the value chain.

Future‐wishing, magical fantasies, yet being ‘real’: Snapshots of student teachers' perceptions during their initial training

This article explores student teachers' perceptions and experiences over the course of the training year. It discusses five important themes to emerge from responses at intervals during the year; themes which, although in some respects contradictory, combine to create a picture of the conflicting feelings experienced by student teachers. This tracking of student teachers' perceptions represents a synthesis of experiences to illustrate feelings and responses, demonstrated by student teachers at various points, in order to give a flavour of their experience. Over 140 students of modern foreign languages (MFL) from two separate higher education institutions in England participated in this longitudinal cohort study, which combined both quantitative and qualitative techniques (the qualitative data serve as the basis for this paper). Although the students were all specialising in modern foreign languages, this paper does not focus primarily on subject specific issues. Whilst some aspects, such as the pressures of course and teaching workloads, are to be predicted in such a study, other issues are more surprising, such as future‐wishing and fantasising, which contrast sharply with the student teachers strong desire to be ‘real’ teachers. It is, however, this desire to be ‘real’ which appears to fuel the future‐wishing and fantasies.

New Turkish Cinema–Individual Tales of Common Concerns

For several years until the beginning of the 1990s, Turkish cinema seemed to be suffering from a paucity of ideas, or a synthesis of experiences in relation to life as it is lived. Following the impact made by Yilmaz Guney and courageous works by a number of talented filmmakers, such as Ali Özgenturk and Erden Kiral, the momentum was gradually lost, taking with it creativity and originality. Several rural films were made — mostly by urban directors--as if to cash in on a successful formula, and leftist ideology was used almost as if following a fashion, without sincerity or conviction.

THE GERONTOLOGY PRACTICUM AS SERVICE-LEARNING

This article argues that the gerontology practicum placement is service - learning when guidance is provided to help students integrate the dual goals of service and learning , and when the requisite components of reflection , analysis , and application are built into the practicum experience . Exit interviews conducted with students and field supervisors supported the idea that the practicum experience offered a balance between service and learning , and it was an opportunity for interdisciplinary teamwork , reciprocal benefits , and professional development . Specific discussion focuses on the pedagogical techniques used to encourage individual and group reflection , the synthesis of experiences with academic training , and the application of new understandings in the field setting .

The International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI): Global priorities for the conservation and management of coral reefs and the need for partnerships

The International Coral Reef Initiative (ICRI) is an international partnership, established to reverse the global degradation of coral reefs. In this paper, the ICRI process is outlined and placed within an international policy framework. The outcomes of five regional ICRI workshops are also summarized with respect to threats to coral reefs and needs for their conservation and management. One global priority is to develop and/or establish multi-stakeholder partnerships involving the public and private sectors, NGOs, the scientific community and, in particular, local communities. This reflects growing skepticism that governments alone can bear the responsibility for managing and protecting the environment. The theme of ‘partnerships’ is then discussed and a framework for their establishment is presented. This is followed by a synthesis of experiences and lessons learned in fostering the involvement of stakeholders in resource management. Finally, it is argued that much of the debate between ‘top-down’ versus ‘bottom-up’ approaches is misplaced and that attention should focus, instead, on the need to link local concerns, needs and actions to the national and international governance structures that have been developed to conserve and manage the global environment.

Urban Spaces and Cultural Settings

The complexity of cities calls for a multidisciplinary approach, urging urban historians to draw from social, economic, political, intellectual, as well as architectural sources. In exploring different materials, urban historians must carefully consider the motives of the various people who shape urban form and record urban change. They must approach urban history not as a canon of precedents or a chronicle of progress, but as a complex and ongoing enterprise.Equally important is the meaning of a city and how that meaning changes over time. Urban history is not just a synthesis of priorities and disciplinary techniques, but also a synthesis of experiences and visions. Integration of social and formal analyses is crucial, for both are formative and each helps shape the other. The intricate webs of power and meaning that are elaborated through architectural space need exploration as well. To write urban history is to give narrative form to these processes.